Before choosing where to look, be clear about what you're looking for. Having a spare room and needing someone for it is different from needing a room; arriving in a city where you know nobody is different from wanting to rent a whole flat with two other people. Each situation calls for a different channel.
Listing sites
The big flat and room search sites: you filter by area, price and date and see hundreds of options. If what you need urgently is the room, they have more supply than anything else, by far.
What they don't tell you is anything about the people. The listing describes the room; you meet the people at the viewing, if at all. And since everyone messages the same listings, whoever is renting gets dozens of messages and decides fast — often by who replied first.
Flatmate apps
They put the person before the room: profiles, photos, sometimes questions about how you live or a compatibility score. If living together worries you more than square metres, they start where the search should start.
Their limit is how many people are using them in your city. An app works as well as the number of active people looking for the same thing in the same place. Before you spend hours on one, ask three things:
- How many people are looking in my city, and in my area?
- What's free and what's paid? Above all: can I talk to someone without paying?
- What is the compatibility based on? Does it explain why you'd get on, or just give you a number?
How Roomealo works out compatibility
Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp groups
Fast, free and busy, especially in cities with lots of students and newcomers. There are groups by city, neighbourhood, university and nationality, and many rooms move there before they ever reach a listing site.
The price is that there's no filter at all. Nobody checks who's posting, and it's the channel where the most scams appear. Use them, but keep the rule of paying nothing before you've seen the room.
How to spot a room scam before you pay
Universities, halls and associations
Many universities run an accommodation service or noticeboard, and student associations — including those for international students — help people arriving from abroad. The advantage is that people arrive already filtered by shared context: same campus, same calendar, often the same situation.
If you study or are about to, look here first, and early: accommodation boards tend to move months before term starts.
Your own network
Friends of friends, colleagues, a story on social media. It's the channel with the most trust: someone vouches for the other person. And its reach is what it is: if nobody in your circle is looking at the same time, it doesn't work.
A warning: knowing someone, even being friends, says nothing about what living with them is like. Plenty of friendships end in the first shared flat precisely because nobody talked about schedules, cleaning or money "because we already know each other".
Which channel for your situation
- You have a spare room and need someone: a listing site gives you volume, an app helps you filter. What saves the most time is knowing what kind of person fits the household before you post.
- You need a room and care who with: start with the people — apps and your network — and use listing sites to see what rooms cost in each area.
- You're moving from abroad to study or work: university or employer first, city groups second, and no transfers without seeing.
- You want to rent a whole flat together: form the group first and check you fit; then find the flat. The other way round tends to get expensive.
Wherever you look, the filter is the same
The channel decides how many people you meet. Who you choose is decided by what you ask. The conversations that prevent problems are the same everywhere: schedules, cleaning, guests, money, and how you'll tell each other when something isn't working.